The History of the Kings of Rome; With a Prefatory Dissertation on Its Sources and Evidence Volume 25 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... at all eventa before the pretended discovery of Numa's writings in A.u.c. 573 (b.o. 181). Before examining this subject, we will insert what Sir G. C. Lewis says upon it, as follows:2--" Owing to the popular conception of him (Numa) as a philosopher and wise man, he was represented as the scholar of Pythagoras, whose fame was doubtless more widely spread in Italy than that of Thales and other ancient philosophers of Greece and Asia Minor. This belief seems to have been prevalent at Rome from an early time, and was doubtless recognised by Fabius and other ancient historians. It was embodied in the forged books of Numa's religious laws, which were brought forward as having been found in his tomb on the Janiculum in 181 B.c. about twenty years after the end of the Second Punic War. When, however, Polybius and other careful historians came to compare the time assigned to Numa with the date of Pythagoras, they perceived that the disciple must have lived above a century and a half before the master, and therefore that the story was false. The anachronism is as if it were said that James L NUMA AND PYTHAGORAS. 167 derived his maxims of government from Adam Smith, or Henry IV. from Montesquieu. As this legend could not have arisen till the age of Pythagoras, and the fact of his being contemporary with the last king, or with the first years of the Republic, had been forgotten, we can hardly suppose it to have been much earlier than the capture of Rome by the Gauls." How let us remark the inconsistencies of this statement. It assumes, first, that the true tradition, that Pythagoras was contemporary with the last King of Rome, who was expelled in B.c. 510, must have been forgotten before the capture of Rome by the Gauls, which happened in...